Enhanced photoluminescence from porous silicon nanowire arrays.

Chunqian Zhang,Chuanbo Li,Yuhua Zuo,Jun Zheng,Qiming Wang,Buwen Cheng,Zhi Liu,Chunlai Xue

doi:10.1186/1556-276x-8-277

Abstract

The enhanced room-temperature photoluminescence of porous Si nanowire arrays and its mechanism are investigated. Over 4 orders of magnitude enhancement of light intensity is observed by tuning their nanostructures and surface modification. It is concluded that the localized states related to Si-O bonds and self-trapped excitations in the nanoporous structures are attributed to the strong light emission.

Highlights

The past decade has seen intense interest in nanoscale structures as these materials exhibit significantly different optical and electrical properties from their bulk materials [1,2,3,4]
Over 4 orders of magnitude enhancement of PL intensity is observed at room temperature by engineering their nanostructures and chemically modifying their surfaces
Ag particles were formed in the solution of AgNO3 (0.06 M) and hydrofluoric acid (HF) (5 M) for 10 min followed by the chemical etching of Si NWAs in the solution of HF (5 M) and H2O2 for 15 min

Summary

Background

The past decade has seen intense interest in nanoscale structures as these materials exhibit significantly different optical and electrical properties from their bulk materials [1,2,3,4]. There have been many reports discussing light emission and its mechanism from porous Si [11,12,13], Si sphere [14], and nanowire [3,15,16,17,18,19,20] structures. Several perspectives, such as quantum size effects [2], interfacial state [11,14], and radiative defects in SiOx [19,21] are used to explain their contribution on the strong photoluminescence (PL). Over 4 orders of magnitude enhancement of PL intensity is observed at room temperature by engineering their nanostructures and chemically modifying their surfaces

Methods

Results and discussion

Conclusion

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